


All the Things I Cannot Say

by Inthemorninglight



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Ace/Aro Jemma, Aromantic, Female Friendship, Gen, Jemma Simmons Needs a Hug, Jemma is not okay, Jemma needs to deal with her trauma, Platonic Relationships, Post-Episode: s03e10 Maveth, Recovery, Team Supporting Jemma, Team as Family, Women Supporting Women
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:37:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6392839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthemorninglight/pseuds/Inthemorninglight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is so much anger and guilt and terror churning inside her and she just wants to make it stop. </p><p>Jemma Simmons' slow road to recovery with the help of her team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Will is dead. No one’s said it out loud yet, but she sees it etched in Fitz’s expression, flickering in his eyes the moment he finds her gaze. Still, she has to look herself, has to see the empty retrieval pod, see that there is no one else coming.

First she feels horror, because even though she knew this was a possibility – a probability – she had clung to that small grain of hope for him. Because she owed him that much. Then she feels sick. Sick at the thought of him dying there without ever seeing the sun again. Dying there all alone after fourteen years. Dying there while she is living here. 

And then, as she turns, sees the expression on Fitz’s face, launches herself into his arms, something finally seems to disconnect, to snap inside her. There is too much to feel, so she stops feeling it. Her face is soaked with tears that keep coming in silent waves as the hugging and holding part of the reunions start to break up, but the inside of her has gone numb. 

She is ushered along with everyone else to the medical bay for a perfunctory examination. She registers Bobbi’s look of shock and anger when she strips off her shirt, and realizes distantly that she hadn’t really gotten the chance to mention the torture bit. She doesn’t even feel the antiseptic or the stitches. 

“I’m sorry,” Daisy says, getting in front of her as they transition to debriefing. The words aren’t just for Will; they’re an apology for what happened to Simmons tonight. There’s so much in those two little words, and she wipes her cheeks and tries to smile for Daisy’s sake, but it goes no deeper than the twitch of her lips. 

And then Fitz, sitting next to her, tells the whole story of what happened. How Will had been dead since they’d pulled Simmons out. How that thing had stolen his body. How he’d had to destroy it. And this finally cracks the damn, the knowledge that he died giving her the chance to escape. As she dreaded for weeks, seen again and again in her nightmares. 

Why do all these men she loves keep sacrificing themselves for her? 

She manages to keep a hold on herself until they get back to base. Until she’s alone in her shower standing under the steaming jet turned up high enough to numb her skin. Then she sobs until its screams, curls up on the tiled floor and tries to rid herself of this horrible, crushing feeling that is more than simple grief or guilt or whatever it is. It only helps a little.  
...

When she opens the bathroom door, Fitz is sitting on the end of her bed. He jumps up the moment he sees her, looking everywhere but at her, standing in only a towel, dripping on the rug. Finally settling on staring at the floor, he says haltingly, “I just – I needed to – but I can come back later –”

He starts for the door. 

“Don’t go.” The words surprise both of them, jumping from her in a sudden aversion-edging-on-terror of solitude. He pauses, hand hovering uncertainly over the doorknob. “I’ll just… um… get dressed quickly and…” She trails off. What are they going to do? She doesn’t particularly want to talk. She doesn’t particularly want to do anything but stare into the darkness, but she doesn’t want to do it alone. 

She crosses over to her closet and he turns dutifully to the corner, staring hard at the wall. It reminds her of The Academy, in between seventeen hour days in the lab when she would crash on his floor because it was closer, and they didn’t think twice about blearily scrambling in and out of clothes in the same room. Then she thinks of Will and how they only had one room and how personal boundaries had eroded to the point of nonexistence. Then she stops thinking again. 

She doesn’t pay much attention to what she grabs, pulling on the first garments her hands find, and when she’s suitably covered, pads over to the bed and curls up against the headboard, looking at him sideways. 

“Jemma…” he starts, turning toward her, but he still can’t look at her. His eyes slide over her and fix on the corner of the mattress. “I just… I’m so, so sorry. And I needed to say that.” 

She feels her throat closing and thinks she might be sick again. When she doesn’t say anything he hurries on, words tumbling over one another in his haste to explain.  
“I tried to bring him back, I promise I did. I had a plan. We were going to give Ward the slip; it was clever, but – but I know it doesn’t matter anyway. I mean, I’ll understand if you can’t look at me for a while. It was still me who set him on fire. I’ll understand if that –” his voice breaks – “ruins things.” 

She’s been shaking her head faster and faster as he keeps talking. 

“No, Fitz, of course it wasn’t your fault –”

“I know that, but it was still me,” he tramples over her protestations. “It was still his body, and it was still me that destroyed it.” 

“You had to,” she’s crying again. She hates that she’s crying because he won’t take what she’s saying seriously, but she can’t help it. She slides to the floor in a heap, reaching for his fingers, pulling him down in front of her, gripping his hands between hers as hard as she can so that maybe he’ll understand. “You saved him. It’s what he’d’ve wanted, it’s what he did. He made the same choice with his crew, his friends. You saved him.” 

She brings his fingers to her lips, kissing his knuckles, her tears dripping down the backs of his hands. The next things she knows he’s holding her, their foreheads touching, then their lips and everything is confusing. She wants him to know that she doesn’t blame him, could never blame him. That she’s so relieved he came back. That she’s grateful he tried at all. Tried so hard. And she’s grateful he doesn’t leave. The warm weight of his arm over her stomach, the steady rise of his chest against her back keep her sane in the darkness. But this is not exactly where she wanted to go. This is not exactly how she wanted to get there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick thanks to all y'all for the support!   
> I wanted to mention names because you might notice that mostly Simmons is referred to as 'Simmons' but not all the time. Because she's almost always Simmons in season one back when she has respect and authority, that's what I've chosen to go with. If the boys get to go by there last names, so does she :P When she's 'Jemma', that's generally a demarcation that we're in Fitz or Daisy's POV. I do skip around a little. 
> 
> I've had a good start to this story written for weeks now, although I'm still trying to sort out what order everything should go in and if more scenes need to be added here or there, so I'll throw stuff up as I work through it. Life's a terrifying mess right now, but I'll do my best!

Sleep comes more as a relinquish of control rather than a quieting of thought. Several times she finds herself back in the midst of the sandstorm, searching frantically, silently, for Will. Or for his body. Or Fitz. Or Ward. Or herself.

When she finally drags herself back to consciousness, the first thing she notices is Fitz’s arm still around her, lying carefully over the bandages. For a split-second it’s comforting not to be alone, but then the reality of the situation settles over her and she suddenly feels trapped under the weight. What has she done? No, no, no, she should not have done that. It was foolish and selfish and weak.

Trying not to wake him, she pushes his arm off and scrambles out of bed. She rakes her hands through her hair, trying to get a hold of her breathing, and looks down at him, asleep in her bed. He looks so _young_ like that, his curls mashed against his forehead, shirt askew. It brings her right back to the Bus, to the way he was before they went into the field. God, she loves him so much, but she _can’t_ –

She turns and slips out of the room.

Xxx

“Have you seen Jemma?” Fitz asks blearily, sitting down next to Daisy and Lincoln in the crowded kitchen. He cranes his neck around, but doesn’t see her. Most people are up now, although the room is unnaturally quiet for how full it is.

“She’s probably still sleeping,” Lincoln says. “Those pain killers Bobbi gave her knock a person out.”

Fitz shakes his head. “She wasn’t there when –. When I stopped by her room. This morning. When I was coming here from my room.” he adds quickly, awkwardly. Better the rest of the team doesn’t know they shared a bed. Not that anything happened, but he cringes at the thought of what Hunter would say anyway.

“Maybe she’s in the lab,” Daisy suggests, sipping her coffee.

“Maybe,” Fitz mumbles.

Daisy sets down her mug and punches his shoulder in the way she has that is somehow comforting. “Hey, she just needs some time. She’s been through a lot.”

Xxx

Simmons tries the lab, but for only the second time in her life it doesn’t work. Things are supposed to make sense there. The cool, clean space usually clears her head, sucks her into tangible, fixable problems. But there are no missions, no urgent need for lab work to be done right now. There are no distractions.

She takes instead to wandering the base with no aim but to avoid people. She lingers at the doors to the gym, but her body aches and this has never been her space. It’s only been welcoming lately because she’s wanted to be someone else, but she isn’t sure she wants that anymore.

She doesn’t know what to do with herself. There are too many things building and crashing inside of her. She balls her hands into fists, letting her nails bite into her palms just to remind herself that she can, that there are still some things she can control. Unbidden, Ward’s face looms up behind her eyelids.

_I’ll catch you if you fall…. You know I’d never hurt you…._

Her side throbs where Bobbi had to seal her up with seventeen stitches and she lets out an involuntary cry and pounds her fist against the wall. And again. And again.

“Simmons.”

A hand grabs her wrist, vicelike and unshakeable, but not hurting.

She blinks those stupid, despised tears out of her eyes again and turns to look. May gently folds her raised fist down to her side. Simmons writhes inside, hating being moved under someone else’s volition.

May looks at her a long while. She knows her hair is a mess, her breath coming in uneven pants. She thinks of Andrew and thinks she might be sick again.

“Come with me,” May says, and turns, walking back toward the sparring room where, of course, she would be at this time of the morning.

Simmons thinks about ignoring the order, to prove that she can, but she doesn’t want to be that person anymore. She likes orders. She likes following rules because she wants to, not because she has to. She makes the choice to follow.

May has already taken up her stance in the middle of the mat. Her eyes are closed. She isn’t practicing fight moves, she’s calming herself, centering herself. She has shut out the rest of the world. Simmons leans against the wall, slowly sinks to the floor as she watches May sway and weave, hypnotized.

She doesn’t know what’s inside May, but she’s sure it’s at least as big as what’s inside her.

 Xxx

Fitz is starting to get seriously anxious. She’s not in the lab. She’s not in her room. He’s ready to start searching the security camera footage when he runs into Bobbi, who tells him she’s with May in the sparring room.

The sparring room? When has Jemma _ever_ hung out in the sparring room? With May?  But they’re not sparring. May’s doing her centering martial arts thing, and Jemma is curled up against the wall, watching.

Careful not to sneak up on her, he slides down next to her. Fitz looks between her and May several times, trying to decide if it’s safe to ask about this morning and her not being there when he woke up. That’s when he notices the hand she’s cradling against her chest.

“What happened there?” he asks, nodding to the bloody knuckles.

She looks down as if she hadn’t even noticed.

“Let me have a look.” He starts to reach for her hand, but she jumps up.

“I should go… eat something….” And she darts away.

Fitz looks after her, baffled. They kissed last night, and now she won’t even look at him.

The back of Fitz’s neck prickles and he looks around to see May scowling deeply at him. He scurries from the sparring room.

Xxx

_This is nice_ , is all Daisy can think. Lincoln’s hands are at her waist; his lips are soft and sweet on hers, his weight a pleasant, reassuring pressure against her. They both hear the footsteps, but they don’t stop. She never got to do this, make out with a boy in the halls, for the whole school to see. She almost wants to giggle.

“Oh… my.” The footsteps skid to a halt. Simmons sounds extremely awkward.

“Hey,” Daisy says casually, flipping her hair out of her face. She wouldn’t have stopped, but Lincoln, who has a little more sense of decorum, pulled away.

“Oh, don’t let me interrupt,” Simmons says quickly, holding up a hand.

She makes to slide past them, but Daisy, noticing that she’s nursing the other hand, grabs her elbow.

“Hang on, what happened to you?” She prods the bloody knuckles and Simmons winces. “Who’d you sock?” Daisy asks, impressed by this new development.

Simmons grimaces. “The wall.”

Starting to sense a bigger problem here, Daisy slides out from under Lincoln. “C’mon, I’ll patch that up for you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to…” Simmons trails off, looking between her and Lincoln.

Daisy rolls her eyes and slips an arm around Jemma’s shoulders. “Don’t worry. We’ve got plenty of time for that later.” She turns to wink at Lincoln over her shoulder, feeling her stomach flutter at his approving nod.

Xxx

Jemma’s quiet as Daisy cleans the abrasions on her knuckles and gently wraps gauze around them.

“I think you might have fractured something,” she says, running her thumb lightly over a swollen knuckle. “But you’re the doctor. Remind me to teach you how to punch one of these days.”

Jemma keeps staring at her fingers. It’s like right after she got back from that _place_. Daisy isn’t sure if she can hear her.

“Jemma, you can talk to me. You know that, right?”

Finally Simmons looks up, smiles a little. “Of course.”

“And… it’s okay to be not okay for a little while. After what they did. And everything. As long as you don’t let it consume you.”

She lets out a long, shuddering breath and wraps her arms around her stomach, folding in half on herself.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispers.

“Do what?” Daisy asks, alarmed, taken aback by this sudden transparency. She’s glad at the honesty, but she wasn’t expecting to be let in so easily.

“Everything,” Jemma says, looking up at her a little bit desperately. “I just… there’s just so much inside of me that I can’t sort out.”

Daisy doesn’t know what to do with drowning people. She’s usually the one drowning. But she knows who _is_ good at dealing with drowning people.

“Have you talked to May?” she asks.

Jemma shrugs. “She caught me punching the wall.”

Daisy jumps to sit next to Jemma on the gurney, squeezes her shoulders in a sideways hug. “You should talk to her. She knows a lot about sorting things out inside yourself. And punching walls.”

Jemma gives a watery laugh.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Daisy promises.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some graphic descriptions of injuries sustained through torture in this chapter.

She waits until dinner. The rest of the team is feasting on take-out in the kitchen, a little more lively than they were this morning. But May isn’t there, and Simmons doesn’t feel like eating and even less like dodging Fitz’s solicitous staring. This time May’s in the cockpit, checking everything over after their last disaster.

Simmons doesn’t know what to do. She’s aware that hovering in the doorway watching May work is both very awkward and slightly creepy, but her voice seems to have deserted her and she’s not sure what she came here for anyway. She’s about to slip away like a shadow when May speaks.

“Did you need something, Agent Simmons?”

Simmons can’t help but jump. May keeps her eyes on what she’s doing, but she still feels caught in the headlights. She doesn’t know how to explain what she wants, doesn’t even know exactly what it is.

“I practice at five every morning,” May says into the spooling silence.

Simmons nods although May can’t see it and turns to go. Facing the hallway, though, she pauses, closes her eyes for a moment. “Thank you.”

Xxx

He just wants to check on her. He’s not… expecting something. Just because they kissed. He’s not that guy. He’s happy to take it slow, as slow as she wants. But she wasn’t at dinner and he doesn’t think she’s eaten very much and –

But the door’s locked. It’s late and she’s probably asleep and he doesn’t want to wake her. He just… thought she might have left it unlocked. He turns toward his own bunk, trying not to be too disappointed and hoping she’s okay.

Xxx

She cannot take this sitting still. It might actually be killing her. May sits cross-legged in front of her, eyes closed, still as a statue. Her only instructions, forty-five minutes ago, were to “sit, breathe, don’t think.”

Simmons is not built for not thinking, though. She has to do calculus in her head while debating the merits of the ninth and tenth doctors with Fitz just to keep from getting bored in the lab. She can’t just _stop thinking,_ and that’s the problem. Her side hurts. Her ribs hurt. Her back hurts. Her leg hurts. Every time she closes her eyes she sees Ward, and every time she opens them she sees May and thinks of Andrew.

“That was good,” May says when the hour’s finally up.

She stands, stretches, and bends down to help Simmons carefully to her feet, taking a moment to look over her expression.

“It takes practice,” she says quietly.

Simmons shakes her head ruefully. “I’m not used to doing poorly at mental activities.”

“Keep trying. You’ll get better,” May promises.

Xxx

“This is new,” Bobbi comments, taking Simmons’ bandaged hand gently in her own.

“I punched a wall,” she admits, not meeting Bobbi’s eyes. “Sorry, but can we… just… get through with it?”

She sits tensely on the exam table, looking anywhere but at the bandages and antiseptic Bobbi has lined up at the ready. Bobbi frowns. It isn’t like Jemma not to micromanage medical procedures, even minor ones. Bobbi’s caught her trying to stitch herself up too many times to not be perturbed by this compliance.

“Okay, let’s start with your leg, then. How’s it feel today?” Bobbi kneels to roll Simmons’ pant leg up and carefully remove the bandage.

“It stings,” Jemma tells her.

This is the understatement of the century. From what Bobbi can tell, someone peeled back strips of skin from her right shin, leaving stripes of bloody muscle exposed from knee to ankle. The medical team was talking about skin grafts. It’s not infected, so the most Bobbi can do is clean it and apply a new bandage coated in a light neurotoxin that will hopefully numb some of the pain of exposed nerves.

“This is going to hurt,” Bobbi tells her with a grimace. “Feel free to scream a little.”

But aside from a sharp hiss when the antiseptic streams over her shin, Jemma doesn’t make a noise. This turns something in Bobbi’s stomach.

The rest of the examination goes in similar fashion, Bobbi checking, cleaning, and redressing each wound as gently as she can in silence. She wants to speak, to distract Jemma, to take her out of this clinical place, to remind her the hands on her body are kind. But she can think of nothing to say. Narrating what she’s doing will only make it worse, and might even be insulting to Jemma. Smiling or chirping gossip or making small-talk over injuries like these would be grotesque. And Bobbi is acutely aware that the wounds she’s seeing are only the half that are visible.

There are shallow slices all over Jemma’s abdomen and lower back, only a couple requiring stitches. Several of her ribs are fractured. Bruises splotch her torso and back in garish blacks and purples. They center on mottled patches where ridged imprints suggest a plyers had been used to twist the skin and muscle.

The worst part, however, are the burns. They are a sort of horrifying artwork, probably achieving such definition from a blowtorch. The tentacles of the HYDRA seal curl over the bony planes of her back around the thick letters ‘TK’. The Telekinetic. ‘Slut’ and ‘bitch’ are seared over her chest and side. And on her lower belly, right over where her uterus must lie, the crude image of a dick has been etched with flame.

Bobbi doesn’t know if Jemma has seen the burns yet; they’ve been covered thickly in healing pastes and bandages. She hopes they’ll heal, but scarring is almost inevitable. Looking at them again today, it is all Bobbi can do to swallow back the nausea and cold fury roiling in her stomach.

Xxx

Fitz isn’t exactly surprised to find her there when he shuffles into the lab, still groggy from sleep at 6:30 in the morning. It’s only been four days since they got back, since everything. Jemma’s technically not supposed to be here. She’s supposed to be on medical leave. Coulson even tried to persuade her to go home, spend some time with her parents. She hasn’t seen them since before the alien planet and the holidays are coming up now.

But of course she wouldn’t. She hasn’t talked to him much about it other than to tell him the conversation happened and she wasn’t leaving. She’s barely spoken to him at all, actually, since the night they got back. He’s not surprised she won’t go home; the cut across her cheek is still scabbed and puffy, the rope marks on her wrists vivid against her pale skin. And he knows there’s much, much more damage hidden beneath her thick jumpers and collard blouses. She isn’t ready to explain all that to them yet, or rather, make up more comforting lies. She probably never will be.

Because Jemma’s parents are so unabashedly proud, so soft and doting on their brilliant only child, most people forget that she hasn’t lived with them since she was thirteen. By the time he met her at the Academy, she’d already started to feel like they didn’t know her anymore. Now…. He’s starting to doubt that he even knows her anymore.

He rubs the back of his neck, brought back to the current uncertainty between them. That’s when she seems to notice he’s there. She looks up and pulls a smile that’s too thin to even be polite.

“What’re you working on?” he asks, sidling up beside her, deciding he’s going to give it one more shot.

“Just an old prototype,” she murmurs, sliding the blueprints over to him. He recognizes them as a project they’d theorized about a million years ago on the Bus. A pocket dialysis kit that could scrub poisons or infection from the bloodstream.

“We should have tried a different alloy for the siphon,” he says, pointing to some of his chicken-scratch notes in the margins.

“Maybe,” she says distractedly. “I think I’m supposed to be in medical, right now, actually. Sorry. Bobbi’ll kill me if I miss a follow-up.”

“How _are_ you feeling?” he asks. She hasn’t said anything about any of it. He’s not even sure what they did to her, and not knowing is slowly driving him mad.

“Fine, really,” she says vaguely, flitting as quickly toward the door as she can without seeming rude.

Resignation settles over him, heavy and uncomfortable like a wet blanket. He doesn’t blame her for not being able to look at him, for making excuses to get away from him. He’d prepared himself for this that night. But he can’t stop the bitter disappointment it leaves congealing in his stomach. He’d been foolish enough to believe her that night when she said she didn’t blame him, when she kissed him and held him and let him into her bed. But she’d been exhausted and delirious on pain meds and in shock. Of course it hadn’t been real.

As soon as he’s sure she’s out of earshot, he slams his palms against the table, letting his anger and frustration out in a growl. He’s not angry with her. Of course he’s not. It’s not her fault. It’s his fault and fucking HYDRA, and he’s so sick of the universe’s shit, almost giving them something good only to yank it away and shred it to pieces right under his nose again and again.

And he’s more afraid now than ever before that the damage is irreparable.

Xxx  

Simmons leans against the wall around the corner from the lab. She can hear Fitz kicking angrily at chairs and tables, and bites the inside of her lip until she tastes blood to stop from crying.

She’s going to lose him.

Maybe it would have turned out okay if she hadn’t kissed him, but now she’s done it twice. What kind of shitty person does that when they know that’s not how they feel? She keeps leading him on and pushing him away, giving him a moment of happiness only to crush it the next day.

She’s destroying him, and she’ll deserve it when he does finally walk away from her for good. And she’s so terrified at the prospect of that loneliness it leaves her breathless.

Xxx

“How’s it going with May?” Daisy asks that night, sliding in next to Simmons at the sink where she’s washing her dishes.

Terribly, she wants to say. She’s rubbish at meditation and it isn’t helping. She isn’t sure what she expected. Maybe some kind of cathartic physical activity. But sitting still with that dark knot of… of... anger and guilt and fear inside her isn’t doing anything but making things worse.

“Fine,” she says instead, quietly, focusing on the mug she’s scrubbing harder than she needs to. Soap trickles down her wrists and smarts in the half-healed rope burns. She can’t stop the wince.

“Here, let me,” Daisy pulls the sponge and the mug from her slick fingers. “Kick back, put your feet up.”

She wants to protest, but Daisy has already ousted her from her position. And her ribs and her back hurt, so she carefully lowers herself into a chair. Lincoln’s the only other person in the mess hall now, clattering his spoon in his soup bowl absent-mindedly.

“May pushes you hard, but she knows what she’s doing,” Daisy tells her over the tinny echo of water hitting the sink basin. Everything is still uncomfortably loud, sometimes, even after all these weeks. “And…” Daisy shuts the water off, dries her hands, and leans against the table in front of Simmons. “Like I said, if you just want to talk, I’m always around.”

She waits for Simmons to say something, maybe start spilling everything that’s welled up in her chest to her right now, but Simmons just smiles a little too tightly and nods her gratitude. Daisy touches her shoulder gently before heading for the hallway. “You coming, Sparky?” she calls over her shoulder to Lincoln.

“In a minute,” he says, grimacing at the name.

He brings his empty bowl around to the sink and starts washing it much more quietly than Daisy managed. Simmons is lost in her thoughts and jumps when he speaks to her. They’ve yet to even be properly introduced, let alone have a conversation.

“You know, if you need someone to talk to, I’m always around, too,” he says. “Sometimes strangers make it easier,” he adds at her startled look. “I don’t really know you, and I don’t really know what you’ve been through, so I don’t have any expectations. No prejudices. In case the people you’d normally talk to are a little too close to the picture.” He shrugs, offers a friendly half-smile, and follows Daisy out of the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I just wrote the description of the injuries and I feel sadistic. But people who torture people with power tools are sadistic and Criminal Minds tells me this is the twisted sort of shit they get off on, so....   
> Anyway, just writing about all the shit Jemma has going on is exhausting. I'm hopeful some comfort moments are coming her way if I get time to write them.


End file.
